Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Dinner Conversation

Went to dinner last night with people from an agency I do work for. It was an interesting mix of tech people, media designers, and project management staff. Just before dinner the conversation turned to medical operations and whether anyone had ‘sat in’ on one. I had worked on a project involving surgery video, and I described integrating the video into the project while avoiding looking at the video.

The good story was from the person that had witnessed a heart operation. The heart for the transplant arrived frozen (or seriously cooled) and was placed on a table to warm up. He described his shock, when after a little while; it started to beat on its own…

Later on the conversation at the other end of the table (it’s always frustrating when an interesting conversation starts at the other end of the table) turned to music and whether anyone played or was into music.

This was started by the senior partner who, it turned out, plays guitar and is into folk music. One of the techies plays flamenco guitar and talked about learning that style and how it was mainly passed from one player to another, rather than from reading tabs or music.

I admitted to playing guitar and when asked what kind of music, spent several seconds trying to come up with a coherent answer.

Another person was then asked whether he was into music and he said ‘No, I don’t play an instrument.’

There was a long pause and then he added; “but, I was the lead singer in a heavy metal band once.”